KYIV. June 17 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Injuries of the reproductive system account for up to 5-6% of wounded military personnel, mainly male soldiers receive such injuries, Halyna Strelko, the chief physician of the IVMED reproductive medicine clinic, said.

"Statistics says that injuries of the reproductive system account for 5-6% of all injuries of military personnel. Mostly, men suffer from this - 96-98%, but there are also women whose military injuries affect the reproductive system. Among these injuries, up to 36% of those that very seriously or irreversibly affect reproductive potential," she said at a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine agency on Thursday.

Strelko noted that "the risks of having infertility among veterans after military service are twice as high as the average in the population. This is associated with stressful situations, infectious diseases and, of course, possible injuries."

She said that the private medical business of Ukraine came up with an initiative that involves the use of the experience of the United States and Israel, whose military medicine provides for the preservation of the fertility of the military.

"We came up with the initiative to offer military personnel, in order to preserve their reproductive potential, to undergo cryopreservation free of charge in our clinic before going to the zone of active hostilities," she said.

Strelko expressed hope that the initiative will be supported, including by the state and charitable foundations, which will allow military personnel who take part in active hostilities to realize their reproductive function.

At the same time, she noted that Ukraine in the legal field will have to solve many issues related to the reproduction and use of frozen genetic material.

In turn, Oleksiy Babich, the general director of the Dila medical laboratory acting as a partner of this initiative, noted that Ukraine is on the verge of a large-scale demographic crisis.

"People have been postponing the birth of children for two years due to COVID-19, now many are leaving because of the war, mostly women of reproductive age, and it's not a fact that they will return to Ukraine. We will soon have a big demographic crisis that will be superimposed on a large loss of the male population. Freezing reproductive cells will help alleviate this crisis," he said.